What happens when the systems we built for growth have to survive contraction instead?
The Great Narrowing: Systems That Get Better Smaller is a practical operating manual for leaders managing thinner workforces, tighter budgets, ageing infrastructure, longer supply chains and declining institutional trust.
Rather than treating contraction as a temporary downturn, Dr. Leticia Lilleström presents a system for protecting what must hold, shortening the distance between problem and response, and rebuilding usable capacity where it matters most.
At the centre of the book is a four-part operating spine:
The Locality Loop — shorten the distance between spend, skill, spares and signal.
The Civic Liquidity Floor — define and fund the minimum services that must continue under pressure.
PAR Sprints — Protect, Adapt and Regenerate through disciplined 30–90-day cycles.
Covenant Measures — replace narrative with visible measures of service, access, avoided failure, local capacity and promises kept.
The book also shows how to rethink maintenance, procurement, labour, energy, city form, public trust and organisational resilience when growth can no longer be assumed.
Written for executives, CFOs, public-sector leaders, board members, operators and decision-makers, The Great Narrowing includes practical tools, implementation pathways, worked financial examples, data-maturity guidance and a full stress test of the model when plans fail, funding disappears or political support weakens.
This is not a book about managing decline.
It is about building systems strong enough to function under constraint — and disciplined enough to get better smaller.
